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Education and Skills Bill

I shall speak to Amendment No. 207A, which has already been referred to by the noble Baronesses. This amendment would place on local education authorities a duty to provide transport for disabled learners up to the age of 25 who are pursuing a course of education or training at a further education institution but who, on account of their disability, cannot use public transport or access private transport to attend the course. The failure to provide transport to disabled students aged over 19 who remain in further adult and continuing education and work-based learning until 25 has been a problem for many years, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, alluded to. A local LSC can agree to continue to fund a disabled person’s education but the local authority is under no obligation to provide transport. This Bill, with its changes to post-16 education, gives us an opportunity to remove this defect. I have recently become president of SKILL, the National Bureau for Students with Disabilities, in succession to the late Lady Darcy de Knayth, and I pay tribute to her and to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for their efforts on this question over the years. The Committee will understand, therefore, that this gives me not only an interest to declare but a sense of responsibility in this matter. SKILL has sought legislation on this issue for some considerable time. It has tabled amendments, had meetings and considerable correspondence with Ministers, and had hoped that the Government might have resolved this issue by now having been given a number of assurances to that effect. But, as no amendment from the department has been forthcoming, it is necessary for me to ask your Lordships to make an amendment in this House. This is, therefore, not so much a probing as a prodding amendment. There is currently a duty on local authorities to provide transport for learners with learning difficulties and disabilities in education who have not yet reached the education leaving age. However, many disabled people may require longer to complete their education and their transition to adult education and services. In recognition of this, legislation also exists that puts a duty on the LSC to provide educational opportunities for these learners up to the age of 25, and the Government give a fee waiver for those pursuing their first level 2 and level 3 qualification up to that age. However, there is a major gap in provision in that there is a power but no duty to provide transport for those learners between the ages of 19 and 25 who remain in education for reasons relating to their disability and may require transport to get to their place of education. The amendment seeks to address this lacuna in the legislation. Guidance for local education authorities on the provision of transport states that provision should also be made for students with learning difficulties and disabilities up to at least the age of 21, although local authorities should seriously consider extending this to 25, yet there is continuing evidence from voluntary sector organisations and the LSC’s review, Through Inclusion to Excellence, that current arrangements, responsibilities and DCSF guidance on transport for learners with learning difficulties and disabilities post-16—but particularly between the ages of 19 and 25—are not sufficient. For example, the Black Country Connexions Partnership reports that three out of the four LEAs in its area will not fund the transport costs of disabled students beyond the age of 19, and evidence from SKILL suggests that this is not unusual. This is affecting progression into employment for these learners and therefore impacts upon skills targets proposed by Leitch and welfare-to-work targets proposed by Freud. Resolving these issues would allow more disabled young people to take advantage of free further education up to 25. This provision will not be needed by all learners with learning difficulties and disabilities but it must be recognised that a few disabled people will never be able to access mainstream public transport because of their impairments, so those who have transport specified in their transition plans should be entitled to free transport. Previously it would have been more difficult to legislate for a duty to provide transport for this group of learners as the transport powers lay with the local authority while provision of education lay with the LSC. However, the Bill lays the foundation for transferring to local authorities the responsibility for providing education to learners aged over 16, which provides an opportunity to clarify transport provision for these learners too. LEAs already have a duty to consider transport for all learners as part of the 14 to 19 agenda and have to consider a partnership approach in relation to matters such as urban, rural and cross-border transport. Extending the duty up to age 25 for disabled learners should not therefore impose too great an additional burden on planning and logistics but it will have a huge impact on learners’ access. As I have said, not all learners with learning difficulties and disabilities will require transport provision to and from their place of education. One approach which has been suggested for reducing students’ reliance on publicly funded transport is travel training. It will not remove the need to provide transport altogether, but it could increase the number of learners who can travel independently and has been shown to lead to considerable savings in unemployment benefit as well as the cost of providing statutory transport. The information available is too limited for a full cost-benefit analysis but I understand that the Department for Transport has recently undertaken some analysis of travel training schemes. Can the Minister confirm that they do indeed represent a useful approach which could reduce the need for students to rely on publicly funded transport and make its provision for those who do need it all the more viable? The amendment calls for a duty to be laid on local authorities to provide transport free of charge for those identified as disabled in education and needing transport up to at least the age of 25. I have had a helpful meeting with the Bill team and a range of officials in the responsible department and it appears that there is uncertainty about the numbers involved. But spread between more than 100 local authorities, even on the highest estimates which have so far been put forward, the numbers should not be great—not more than 200 or 300 students per authority. There has been more than enough time to resolve these uncertainties while all the talks have been going on. What is needed now to concentrate minds is a duty laid on the responsible authorities. It should not be the case that a young disabled person has an identified need for learning and that funding has been identified to provide this learning, yet the young person cannot take this opportunity for lack of transport. The amendment has wide support among organisations working in the field of provision for disabled young people and I commend it to the Committee.